Live Review: Palms,The Pinheads, Grinding Eyes

Palms continued their November residency at the Lansdowne, this time with Wollongong noise-punks The Pinheads and psychedelic-garage group Grinding Eyes. Palms’ penultimate gig was a decent show slapped together with a surprising amount of punch.

The loose atmosphere was a plus, and it felt like a messy session at your mate’s place.

Grinding Eyes are a great new band. They drift between compressed garage riffing and loose psych guitar droning. They didn’t exactly light up the stage with any sort of presence, but their music spoke for itself. It was an exciting mess of crushing expansive guitar grooves and defiantly antique rhythmic patience.

South Coast group The Pinheads are a throwback to a time when grunge was punk’s troubled offspring (and not the over-produced commercial product familiar to most people). While the band kept control of strong melodic post-hardcore rock on stage, the singer writhed around half-naked on the floor faking fart noises into the mic while his guitarist looked on, comfortable in his cheap dress. Grunge was a push against normality and boredom, avoiding big political statements (or any statement) and wallowed in heavy rock. That’s what Pinheads seem to be doing; dishevelment to the point of anarchy is de rigueur, while still being tethered to rock’s central discipline. In other words: they’re fucking fun.

The Sydney music scene is brighter because of Palms. Al Grigg and co are easy to like as human beings, and it helps that their music is catchy as hell. They haven’t bothered with concepts of “scene” or “trend”, and continue to swim through the local industry freely. Their Saturday set held no surprises and played the hits, and the Lansdowne continues to prove itself as a key venue for this type of sound. Guitars and vocals meshed together well and the solid crowd threw back some good vibes.